The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Hearts of Stone Review

I push through the trees, bursting into a clearing in the thicket on my way to the waypoint I'd marked on my map earlier. The dirt road that had became a narrow path now abruptly halts at the worn and weathered gates to a long abandoned ruin, the roof...

Here at Brash Games we have a strict Review Code policy, Paul Ryan owner / editor is the only member of staff at Brash Games permitted to obtain review code and distribute it within the Brash Games review team. No other person is permitted to request...

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Second Opinion

Western RPGs, especially contemporary ones in the open-world style, are built on the supremacy of player choice. While developers will enforce a story in these games, the player typically gets to control almost every aspect of who the main character is.

Snowball fight

A character I liked showed up in the final showdown to immediately die

In many ways, the scope of Wild Hunt defeats its purpose. In Velen and Novigrad, the scale seems bracing, but by the time the game hits Skellige, the size feels oppressive. The vast ocean of content that fills that world saps the core narrative of...

The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Review

Gerald of Rivendell

Going on one hell of a bender in the company of some old friends

The combat remains lamentably dull, and there's a ton of it

So, despite its overlong running time and the malaise that delayed this review, it has to be said that I did enjoy my time with The Witcher 3... but not enough to return to it any time soon, nor to be interested in with any of the upcoming downloadable...

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Review

By all rights, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt should've been the defining game of a generation. It had all the potential in the world and although it's arguably the most ambitious video game to release in years, it remains frustratingly unreliable and...

Galactic Civilizations III

As the United Planet Chair, you smile as your recent resolution passes – you’ve been currying favor from other council races for a while now, and you know that the recent vote will be the final maneuver for your total control of the galaxy....

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Review

There is no question in my mind that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been worth the wait. Itâ€™s sheer scale and absolution in content, alongside its surprisingly strong narrative -- both in the main quest lines, and the peripheral ones around them -- is...

Invisible, Inc.

I can hear the guard in the other room wake up as I extract a hard drive’s worth of corporate lies from a secure databank. Seconds later, an alarm goes off and the automated surveillance system sends a security detail to check on the situation. A...

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt review

A grand finale. An epic beginning.

Games this taxing often carry a sense of pride in their fulfilment, but are so time consuming the end comes as a welcome blessing. But I want to play The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt again, from the beginning, to do things differently. It’s enthralled me like...

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt review

Trees bend and sway, storms blow across the landscape, buzzards circle overhead. The Witcher 3's world moves in a way that game worlds haven't before. It's one of the busiest ever made, and while it's not the biggest in terms of raw square footage, it...

Relentlessly beautiful vistas; Reading about horrifying ghosts and monsters; Playing cards with blacksmiths; Sailing between the isles of Skellige

Frustrating and punishing combat; Frame rate optimisation is ongoing

Sloppy combat and ongoing optimisation can't quite spoil this dark fantasy adventure, set in a stunning world of blood and black magic.